


Don't Fear the Shadows

by Backwards_Blackbird



Series: Tied as One [2]
Category: Ghost (Sweden Band)
Genre: Chapel intimacy, First Times, Frottage, Ghoul behavioral science, Heartbeats, Kissing, Lots of vibes, M/M, Midnight choir rehearsals, Pulse play, vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:42:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25935361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Backwards_Blackbird/pseuds/Backwards_Blackbird
Summary: “You know what they say:Numquam timebunt umbrae, Cardinal.”An encounter in the abbey’s storage annex. Copia is more than a bit nervous about the upcoming tour. His lead guitarist would like to offer his assistance.
Relationships: Cardinal Copia/Dewdrop Ghoul | Fire Ghoul
Series: Tied as One [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882246
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	Don't Fear the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> \- In my verse, Daius is Dewdrop’s true demon name.  
> \- This takes place a little over a month after [I Grow Stronger, Part I (The Audition)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24966262/chapters/60437383).  
> \- Dumb author moment disclaimer: when I wrote I Grow Stronger, I was under the impression that the start of A Pale Tour Named Death on September 9th, 2018 was Copia’s debut. I later found out that there was that whole Rats on the Road leg the May before that. So, my dates are a little off. Shh, suspension of disbelief. Pretend like the first time Copia went out and did his thang was September 9th. ;)  
> \- Enjoy! <3

**Don’t Fear the Shadows**

Just before midnight, the Sisters had gathered in the chapel to sing. Their haunting voices echoed down the cavernous hall, vibrating from stone pillar to wrought-iron window casing, from marble to stained glass, and straight up to the peaked ceiling, so that God might hear the beautifully foul things they had to say.

Cardinal Copia’s heels were clicking confidently across the ice-slick marble floors before the Sisters’ eerie polyphony met his ears. He stopped himself suddenly with a sheepish “ _Oh,_ ” before approaching at a slower pace. 

In one black leather glove, he held two microphones that had malfunctioned during his own rehearsal in the abbey’s performance hall. The tour began in less than two days, and equipment was starting to fail like clockwork. Surely this fell in line with some ancient performers’ superstition? A good omen, like rain on your wedding day? 

Perhaps one of the Emeritus brothers knew. He could have asked them, if not for the slightly inconvenient fact that they were all dead. He tucked the thought away like an errant strand of hair.

Silently, he tip-toed past the chapel entrance and took the microphones to the storage annex directly behind the altar. There was a door, paneled with cherry wood in a peaked Gothic motif, which blended so seamlessly into the church’s wainscoting that one may never have suspected it was there at all. He pulled a small bronze key out of his cincture and clicked open the lock.

Stepping inside, Copia was flooded with the dusty scent of age, of decaying paper and old fabric and centuries-old air forced through organ pipes. The narrow space was packed with cabinets of yellowing sheet music, racks of long unused robes and stacks of musical equipment: stands, cords, and an impressive tower of valve amplifiers Papa Nihil had once used in the late ‘60s. In one dark corner to the right of the entrance sat a timeline-pile of briefcases. The ones on top were silver and pristine, and as the eye followed the pile downward, the cases turned to black plastic, then a garish yellow tweed, then cracked brown leather, each older and dustier than the last. These were the microphone cases of all the prior performers from the Church of Satan, the Cardinal thought—each persuasive and charismatic frontman that had claimed the stage before him. 

At least a few of these had belonged to these Emeritus brothers.

His heartbeat quickened at the sight, and his nerves started to turn his stomach. But he willed them to behave.

From the top of the pile, Copia slid out one silver case and opened it on the floor to retrieve two new microphones. He moved carefully—if not stiltedly—so as not to make a sound. The Sisters continued their maudlin infernal Latin beyond the ornate acoustic grate that separated the annex from the chapel, and pinpoints of candlelight peered through the small holes like leering eyes. 

That night had been Cardinal Copia’s last rehearsal with Ghost before they would be on the road for eighteen months. And, malfunctioning equipment aside, even he could admit it had gone magnificently. His voice felt smooth as velvet, and his practiced ensemble of Umbrae were tight as can be—between the sublime, rich voices of his Umbrae Caeli, the earth-shaking rhythms of his stately Umbra Terra, and the unmatched precision of his guitarists, he was certain his group was the project’s most immaculate incarnation yet. What precisely Imperator and Nihil had sacrificed in order to procure this many reliable and talented ghouls, Copia could only guess. 

He had a few sordid theories. 

But even at this early juncture, the Cardinal had begun to suspect that his most valuable addition was the arrestingly virtuosic Ignis that he had summoned himself, Daius. 

Sister Imperator had been there to hear the demon’s masterful playing that night. She sat in during Miasma, while Copia stood aside in the shadows, gauging her reaction as he caught his breath. Delicious Hellfire had scorched each note of the ghoul’s solos, and still Imperator sat formally, eyes impartial and hands folded in her lap as though she were watching a choral mass. Her lips never moved, her toes never tapped. She nodded once—or was she nodding off?

When it came to the issue of Daius, there was no winning her approval. And so, Copia chose to watch the ghoul instead, his glimmering mask washed in blue light. He moved like a cerulean flame as he played, his lean and sinewy legs dancing in tangles around the stage. And while his fingers worked their magic, he had glanced just once in the Cardinal’s direction with his cheeky tongue caught between his teeth.

Behind Copia in the annex was the sudden rustling of cords. He gave a start and turned around. 

Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear. Give an Umbra a moment on your mind, and he’ll apparently do the same. 

The Cardinal was still learning to tell the ghouls apart at a glance, particularly when they were away from their instruments. Several of them had similar builds, and all were smartly dressed in identical ashen uniforms. But without a shadow of a doubt, he could be sure the singularly small and spunky ghoul sifting through piles of cables behind him was Daius. He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the cord he needed, and his impatient movements were a dead give-away.

Copia stood to return the microphone case. At the sudden sound of plastic-against-plastic, the ghoul spun around. The speckled candlelight that shone through the acoustic grate caught his alert blue eyes beneath his silver mask. 

With surprising politeness for a demon, he remained silent in respect for the rehearsing Sisters nearby. He merely nodded once.

Copia smiled and nodded back in his direction with both thumbs up. He mimed a silent round of applause. 

Daius humbly placed a hand to his birdlike chest and shook his head. He pointed one insistent finger at the Cardinal, then raised both thumbs even more emphatically in return.

Under his breath, Copia received the wordless compliment with a chuckle. He welcomed the reassurance with open arms—with only one more day standing between him and his greatest trial as a performer and a clergyman, to say he was petrified was a vast understatement. But something in the demon’s cavalier attitude comforted him. He cast his dark eyes to the floor.

In the chapel, a single soprano’s descant line flitted upward from the chorus like a wayward bat.

There was the shifting of shadows in his periphery. Daius took a few steps toward the Cardinal as though he had something to say, but he stopped when their shoes were roughly an inch apart. Like a cautious animal, he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, which were positively icy up close. They were quite strange to Copia, who remembered all too well the golden flames that lived in this beast’s true eyes.

Copia raised his eyebrows in expectation. "What?" he mouthed.

The ghoul said nothing. Their ears were filled with the dissonant counterpoint the Sisters sang for their Dark Lord as Daius intensified his frigid gaze. And after a moment, he lifted his right hand in the darkness, tenderly touching two fingertips to Copia’s neck, just beneath his jaw.

Copia flinched at the unexpected contact. 

The Sisters stopped singing.

“Hold on, hold on, let’s try that again. Pickup to measure 42,” Maestra Helquist’s distant voice instructed in the chapel. “Your entrance, altos. Uniform tone, now. Listen louder than you sing. And feel those subdivisions! That’s the heartbeat, okay? Keep it steady. One, two, and—!”

Their choral backdrop bloomed into existence once again.

Daius still tentatively held his hand between them, and his eyes were still locked on the Cardinal’s. Not once did they waver. And then, he tried again. The ghoul’s lanky fingers came to rest once more under Copia’s jaw, and he pressed firmly against his pulse point, measuring the beat of his heart with uncharacteristic patience. He held his fingers there for a full twelve counts. 

Only then did Copia understand.

Since summoning his first ghoul just over a month ago, the Cardinal had scoured the abbey’s library for references on the Umbrae. He was surprised to find they were woefully under-researched; whether that was because they were too mercurial to study, or just comparatively dull against their higher-ranking Hellish cohorts, he was uncertain. But he did find a handful of mid-century articles that delved into the traits and behaviors of the shadow demons, most notably a species profile from 1930 entitled _Minstrels in the Shadows: The Elusive Elemental Umbrae_.

Something he recalled from that article in particular was the creatures’ fixation with pulse. In their natural translucent forms, the Umbrae use pulse to determine how their comrades are feeling. Truth be told, you can see many of their veins in their ghostly limbs, and even a very clear shadow of their dark heart at the center of their breast. To them, pulse is something like a visual polygraph test. It is the most genuine gauge for excitement, attraction, fear, honesty. It is the primary way they check in on those they care for most.

In an opaque human vessel, however, the demons are stripped of this ability. For this reason, many of them are very tactile in their Earthly forms. They can no longer simply see how you are doing… they must _feel_ it. They will touch freely and boldly, and that—even to a depraved Hellspawn—is an action far more intimate. 

Copia swallowed. 

He was nervous about the tour. And Daius knew.

But he did not pull away. He let the demon touch his thrumming vein, let him read him like unholy scripture. Daius widened his bright eyes and tilted his head, as if to say—in his always profane and curiously Scandinavian voice, “ _Really? After that fucking excellent rehearsal, you’re still nervous? Come on, man._ ”

The ghoul traced the curve of the Cardinal’s neck and dipped down below the collar of his black cassock to caress the dip in the center of his collarbone, where his heartbeat was strongest. Copia hummed against his will, and the vibration stirred the demon’s persistent fingers. 

His pulse accelerated further when Daius moved closer, his steps soundless as a ghost’s. The demon nosed the side of Copia’s face just barely, testing the waters for consent. And with a steadying breath, Copia gave it. He placed one gloved hand on the back of Daius’s neck, and the demon proceeded to adjust the black balaclava that covered his mouth, pulling it beneath his chin. And of all things he could have done—of all things Copia admittedly would have welcomed in that intoxicatingly secluded space—he placed a long, reverent kiss on the Cardinal’s cheek. 

Copia’s eyes fluttered shut.

“Come on, now! Stronger! Let Him hear you!” the Maestra called as she led the choir in a crescendo.

Daius pulled back to meet Copia’s bicolored eyes once again, while his fingers stroked one of his sideburns tenderly.

Copia, having just remembered the door to the annex which was cracked open to the hall, frantically looked to be sure they were still alone—but Daius wouldn’t have it. He pulled Copia’s face back to his, resting his masked forehead against the edge of his biretta. His eyes pinned him in place with one wordless but unmistakable request: “ _Stay with me._ ” 

The guitarist then placed the flat of his hand directly over the Cardinal’s heart, his firm touch more soothing than any creature of Hell had any business possessing. 

Horrors flashed through Copia’s mind. What if they were found? This was a ghoul. This was _his_ ghoul. How could he hope to assert Daius’s indispensability if he was caught fraternizing with him in a storage closet? That certainly sends a different message. How close were the Emeritus brothers with their ghouls? 

_Figlio di puttana_. Could this derail his entire trajectory? 

He could feel the demon’s shallow breaths against his lips.

 _Shit, shit, shit_.

Almost instantly, Copia reached forward and brought their mouths together. 

The silver mask posed something of an inconvenience, but he was not deterred. He nuzzled close and slipped his tongue past Daius’s lips, which the demon accepted vigorously. He expected the creature to taste like fire and smoke, like the charred embers in the captivating eyes he had met a month prior, but he did not. He tasted as human as any man he’d ever known, but with a tongue that was feverishly hot. As he pushed himself into the guitarist’s lithe body, he was flooded with warmth, and his sighs fell flat in the tepid September air of the annex.

Very human, as well, was the demon’s obvious arousal, which Copia felt rub insistently against his thigh more than once.

As the Sisters’ voices converged in a unison Aeolian melody, Daius led the Cardinal a few steps back to lean against the plaster wall behind him. All the while, his pretty eyes were steady, unembarrassed, unflinching. 

Unsurprisingly, Copia was not so confident; he looked again to the precariously cracked door. But the Cardinal’s attention was immediately reclaimed when Daius parted his cassock with his knee, rubbing his slim thigh against his concealed cock. Copia’s mouth fell open in a silent moan. He gripped Daius’s black suspenders in both hands, and the demon leaned forward to meet his open mouth. He kissed him repeatedly, ruthlessly, and he only stopped to run his slick tongue slowly along his unpainted bottom lip as he rubbed against his cock again.

A sharp and conspicuous intake of breath disturbed the stillness. Daius froze and placed two fingers against Copia’s lips. The Cardinal released the breath silently and nodded in understanding.

If this was going to happen, it would need to happen quickly.

Copia gripped Daius’s ass and pulled him close, until the ghoul straddled his left leg. With little regard for the Sisters’ positively funereal tempo, he clamped his lips together and thrust against Daius’s growing hardness at an accelerated pace. The demon opened his mouth just slightly as his breaths became more unsteady, his eyes more dire. He still held one finger, like a lifeline, to Copia’s pulse point, which now beat wildly.

And with the gloriously resonant sound of the chorus’s sustained fifth ringing in his ears, too intense for him to fully hear the way Daius’s breath caught in his throat, he returned the gesture, connecting his touch to the frantic ticking of the ghoul’s heart at the base of his neck. 

A small and desperate sound escaped Daius’s mouth.

“Cardinal!” From outside the door, a brassy voice sliced through the atmosphere like a machete.

Daius scrambled like a frightened cat to grab the guitar cable he had come for. After replacing his balaclava and straightening an askew suspender, he threw open the door and walked out. Around Cardinal Copia, the air was suddenly punishingly cool.

“What? What are you still doing here, Ignis? Get upstairs,” Sister Imperator said testily outside the door. “Is Copia in here?”

“He is,” Daius called as he rushed down the hall. “Just some trouble with the microphones.” 

_The microphones_. “Shit!” The Cardinal bugged his eyes and blindly felt around in the darkness for where he had set them down. 

“You could stand to replace a lot of your gear, Sister,” Daius continued with a mischievous lilt as he rounded a corner. “It’s old as shit.”

“Watch it! I don’t see you buying anything yourself!” she returned, then added under her breath, “Asshole.”

The door flung open again, and Imperator appeared in the doorway like the shadow of a great dark bird. 

“There you are! Sweet Satan, that ghoul is a pain in my ass,” she spat as she threw a venomous glare over her shoulder. “Did you get what you needed? And did he get the cable?”

“Uh, yes, Sister,” Copia answered as levelly as he could manage.

“Good.” She straightened the bow on her charcoal blouse and let her hands fall to her thighs. “I’m not surprised at all to find him here with you, to be quite honest. You’ve got yourself quite a follower there, Cardinal.”

Copia’s eyes widened in abject horror. “Ex-excuse me?”

She gestured down the hall. “Oh, you know how the Umbrae are always allegiant to the one who brings them to the surface. I should have considered that before I let _you_ summon the Ignis. The other ghouls are far more cooperative with me. He’s so… _prickly_ ,” she said with a grimace. “But you don’t even have to try with him; he follows you like a lost dog!”

Copia’s hand, by chance, came into contact with the two microphones where he had laid them on the edge of a cabinet. _Praise Lucifer_. He glanced down and grabbed them as casually as he could. “Ah. I hadn’t noticed. He is a demon, after all. Some attitude is to be expected. But he is good, no? He played well tonight.”

Imperator released a begrudging sigh. “He plays very well. He’s a showman, for sure.” She stepped inside the annex and lowered her voice. “Just watch him closely on tour, okay?”

Copia clasped the two microphones behind his back and forced a smile. “I will, Sister. I’ll keep him in line, not to worry.”

Sister Imperator’s smoky eyes pinned him where he stood, just long enough to make him profoundly uncomfortable. “Are you nervous, Cardinal?”

He blinked at least three times too many. “Not… inordinately.”

Imperator gripped both his shoulders. She glanced just past him, only now taking the rehearsal into account. She lowered her voice accordingly. “Look. I know what a process this has been. But I would not have set you up to take the stage if I didn’t think you could handle it.” She straightened his biretta like a mother getting ready to send her son to graduation. “You write beautifully, and you sing beautifully. And I know the world will agree. You know what they say: _Numquam timebunt umbrae_ , Cardinal. Don’t fear the shadows.”

One corner of Copia’s mouth twitched.

“Now, get some rest tonight. I’m sure you need to clear your head,” Imperator finished.

It took every modicum of strength the Cardinal possessed not to laugh. “Certainly. Thank you, Sister.” He awkwardly side-stepped past her, microphones in hand. He waved them as he made his way down the hall. “Good night.”

Like lingering incense, the Sisters’ distant voices drifted down every hall of the abbey, reaching all the way to Copia’s living quarters near the front of the building. Having dropped off the microphones with the others in the performance hall, he let the sound of the haunting chorus embrace him one last time. His gloved hands shook as he unlocked his door.

Once he had closed the door behind him, with one hand still absently clutching the knob, he released a shuddering sigh.

Moonlight scattered a colorful mosaic across his wood floors as it filtered through the stained glass above his bed. And there he would lay, for fifteen deliberately extended minutes, with his eyes closed and his hand wrapped firmly around his cock.

On his discarded cassock, near the center of his left thigh, was a damp spot he had only discovered as he undressed. The garment lay nearby on the bed, limp beside him. He shamelessly pulled the wet mark to his nose as he approached his climax.

And as he released every ounce of tension, of fear, of self-doubt into his practiced palm, all he saw were those blue eyes, begging from behind a silver mask for him to stay.


End file.
